Alliance Advantage: The Art of Creating Value Through Partnering
Author: Yves L. Doz, Gary Hamel
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ISBN: 0875846165
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (September, 1998)
Sales Rank: 8,145
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 2 out of 5
Should have stayed as a Harvard Business Review article
This book is disappointing in too many ways. As is often the case with works by Hamel, the ideas are interesting but there is little practical description of how one might implement them. In the time since most of the research was compiled (evidently in the late 1980s and early 1990s), several of the profiled alliances have failed. This is the danger of any business book (viz: In Search of Excellence), but it seems particularly problematic here. Perhaps it's from skepticism borne by all of the Wall Street meltdowns over the past year, but as the book prattles on about this "new" way of doing business, one cant help wonder whether there is any wisdom here, given that Doz and Hamel couldnt seem to separate the successes from the failures. The inclusion of failures (like Iridium) seem all the worse because there are so few alliances covered. By the third chapter, with the umpteenth mention of the GE-SNECMA alliance, I wondered: why not base this book on a little more than five or six case studies? And that's the biggest problem with this book. There is so little material here that even though the text is only about 280 pages, by the third chapter it is getting grossly repetitive; if you make it to chapter seven (which is one of the few good ones), you win a prize.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The gaps that separate people in an alliance
"Strategic alliances are a logical and timely response to intense and rapid changes in economic activity, technology, and globalization, all of which have cast many corporations into two competitive races: one for the world and the other for the future. Globalization opened the race for the world as firms entered once-closed markets and pursued untapped opportunities. The race for the future compels firms to discover new market opportunities, new solutions for customers, new answers to poorly met needs...This book aims to help managers and their companies to be more successful in creating and guiding their strategic alliances. To that end it offers both conceptual and practical tools for analyzing the design and performance of alliances and presents a wide range of examples of both successful and unsuccessful collaborations" (from the Introduction).In this context, Yves L.Doz and Gary Hamel assume that "two corporations have agreed to work together.They have assessed the value creation potential of their alliance and their own strategic compatibility. And they have decided on a design that promises to enhance collaboration and minimize tension. Everything looks good. Yet the fledgling partners find themselves unable to move from planning to implementation. Why?" Hence, in Chapter 6, after exploring in detail the gaps that separate these corporations from the start, they summarize these gaps as following:
1. Frame Gap: Perspective and definition for understanding the relationship and heuristic gap rules for behaving within it, driving day-to-day interaction.
2. Expectations Gap: Benchmark against which the actual performance (or the strength of early signals alerting to performance difficulties) is to be assessed.
3. Organizational Context Gap: Structure and process for decision making, work, oreganization and performance, and organizational learning may be more or less compatible between partners.
4. Confidence Gap: Self-confidence allows strong personal commitments and personal risk taking in cooperation; lack of confidence makes wholehearted cooperation difficult.
5. Skill Understanding Gap: Need to combine and blend differentiated skills between partners, in particular where process integration is required.
6. Task Definition Gap: Need to define a concrete set of tasks in order to start operational and tangible cooperation.
7. Information Gap: Need to share information.
8. Time Gap: Need to keep balance of costs and benefits in perspective over time, for each partner and between partners.
Hence, they explore how these gaps can be closed. And they say as a common theme runs through their recommendations that "companies should invest in their understanding of the situation and gather intelligence about their partners. They should view the inception of the partner relationship as an opportunity to learn and to improve. This may be more important than blindly rushing into implementation of joint task."
Highly recommended.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Written by academics for academics
I have to admit I am thoroughly dissappointed by this book and cannot understand the positive reviews it received from several of the other readers, except that they may be academics. If you are somebody who is only interested in the theory and philosophical background of corporate partnerships, this might be the book you are looking for, but if you are, like myself, a practical doer, who is looking for hands-on insight and knowledge on this topic, you will be deeply dissappointed. Also several of the examples of "showcase" alliances, such as Iridium, are not only outdated, but in fact, bankrupt. Very annoying to read about these "great" alliances, that several months after publishing went belly up. To sum it up, for the practical business professionals among you, I suggest you keep on researching on other books in this genre. Unfortunately, since I didn't read yet any other books on this topic, I cannot offer an alternative book advice. Similar Products
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